


A Shadow Passed

by fictorium



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Character Death, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-03
Updated: 2016-08-03
Packaged: 2018-07-29 04:54:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7670881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fictorium/pseuds/fictorium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kara doesn't come out to save the plane and it crashes in the bay. How life would have gone differently afterwards. </p><p>(Yes, I killed Alex. I am so sorry. It's right there in the first line though, so no dragging it out. Sorry.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Shadow Passed

**Author's Note:**

> (title from a Spring Awakening lyric)

They bury Alex on a Friday morning.

It’s the same plot as Jeremiah’s empty casket. Kara holds Eliza up as best she can, but some grief is too dense even for someone who can lift mountains. She offers to stay, to quit her job at CatCo and find something - anything - nearby, but even in her teary state Eliza declines.

“I can’t face her apartment,” is all she asks. “Anything you think I should keep, can you send it? Everything else is yours. That’s what she would have wanted.”

Kara nods, because it’s the least she can do when she stayed in a bar to mourn a date she never wanted instead of trying to help. Paralysed by years of hiding, she’d watched that Geneva flight fall into the bay. Not one survivor. Maybe she wouldn’t have been able to catch the plane, maybe her powers are too rusty from lack of use. But there’s a constant thrumming in her veins that tells her otherwise.

“I should have-” she starts to say, and Eliza must know what comes next, because her interruption is both swift and clumsy.

“Yes,” she agrees, reaching for the wine bottle that sits between them on the otherwise empty kitchen table. “Maybe you should have.”

She pours another full glass, not bothering to waste the rest on Kara’s unaffected physiology. “I know we’ve always told you that not being exposed matters more than anything, but sometimes Kara, I wonder just how many family members I have to lose just to protect a race that’s already gone.”

“I’m sorry,” Kara pleads. She knows that Eliza regrets her bluntness, but no answering apology can ever unsay the words. When Kara goes to pack her small bag an awkward hour later, she knows it will be a long time before she sees Midvale again.

 

* * *

 

She’s back at work on Monday, with Alex’s sparse apartment now contained in a pyramid of packing cartons that fills one corner of Kara’s living room. She covered them with some painting sheets, an unfortunate piece of art she can’t bear to look at.

Taking the time off as sick leave had been reckless, but it meant simply calling HR instead of asking Cat’s permission. In a week so impossible, it had been the lesser of two evils. Kara knew she would pay for it today, and maybe even the rest of the week. But if it meant no one at CatCo besides Winn knew Kara’s private business, then it would be worth it.

For once it’s a welcome distraction to hear Cat grumbling to herself in the elevator as it ascends. A shot of normalcy as potent as the espresso at the base of the latte Kara is holding. Perhaps it’s the same reckless feeling that made her not ask for compassionate leave, but she pops the cap on the cup and gives it a blast of laser vision without anyone noticing. It bubbles in a satisfying way, and the thrumming in Kara’s veins gets just a little louder.

“Keira,” Cat snaps the moment the doors open. “As receiving lines go, you’re incredibly depressing.” She takes the coffee, and hums in unexpected pleasure at the first scalding sip. “Trying competence for a change? Will wonders never cease?”

Kara bites her tongue. Usually she protests, but she doesn’t feel like giving Cat that much bloodsport this morning. She isn’t inclined to give anyone much of anything, but hopefully a crushing to-do list will hit her any moment.

“God, who died?” Cat snarks off Kara’s neutral expression. “You’re usually on your fifth pleading Miss Grant by… _what_ did I tell you about crying at work?”

It’s mortifying, honestly, but Kara could no sooner stop the tears than she could reverse the Earth’s relationship with gravity. Actually, she should check with Kal about that, because he’s forever pulling stunts like that. She wipes frantically at her cheeks, but that just makes the tablet wedged under her arm fall to the floor with a crack.

“I should take that out of your paycheck,” Cat warns. “If you’re quite done?”

“My… my sister,” Kara blurts, because secrets taste like salt water and ash and every waking moment feels like waking alone at 3am to a room full of shadows. There’s a galaxy between Kara and the family she lost all those years ago, but the space Alex left behind is lurking around every corner, dark and yawning, just waiting to pull Kara in. “That’s who died.”

She gathers herself while Cat is actually stunned into silence for all of five seconds.

“That’s… you have a sister?”

“Not anymore,” Kara snaps. “I’ll go start on the guest list for Friday,” she offers, because of all the things she’s ever wanted from Cat Grant, pity isn’t close to being one of them.

 

* * *

 

It takes a week. Seven measly days of working harder than she ever has before, and crying herself to sleep six of those seven nights. Kara bends and bends, unaware that she has it in her to break.

But break she does, a week after returning from Midvale. She has sorted and scheduled and fetched and collaborated, anything to keep away from the inquisition at the edge of Cat’s thoughtful glances. Being noticed isn’t supposed to come with all these jagged edges, and every day is like dodging a hail storm of emotional glass shards.

So when Kara hears the cry, wavering and terrified above the din of a Friday night in National City, she stops fighting the urge that’s bubbled in her since she pulled the door off a car by the beach twelve years ago.

It takes a handful of stumbling steps. It takes finally pushing against the ground with all the strength she’s been too terrified to use. It takes closing her eyes and maybe it even takes wishing on a damn star, but Kara feels the jolt and the whoosh of flight at last. A car, on the cliffside, and a crying baby. She’s reliving her own life and changing nothing, but she wrenches that smoldering metal off all over again.

“Here,” she tells the screaming mother, handing the bundle over with trembling hands. For a moment the relief seems to wash it all away, and Kara thinks she’s earned a reprieve for her moment of madness.

“How the _fuck_ did you do that?” The mother demands, hugging her child close as though Kara might snatch her back at any moment. “You came up over the edge like a rocket. Are you… what are you?”

“I don’t know,” Kara answers.

It feels nice to be honest for a change.

 

* * *

 

Having a whole media company owe her a favor comes in useful, so Kara hears about it in seconds when the story first appears on the wires. It’s a paragraph, an afterthought, but she can feel Alex’s disapproval like a presence in the room beside her when she sits at her desk on the still-dark 40th floor on Saturday morning.

Only Kal has to ruin everything, because last night he pulled off a freakishly similar rescue and it doesn’t take long for some enterprising journalist fighting for her job at the Tribune to make the connection. When her editors refuse to run speculation of a new, emerging hero on this coast, Mackenzie brings it right to Cat Grant herself. Kara watches on, helpless, from the doorway.

It’s eleven on a Saturday, and if Cat had Carter this weekend she wouldn’t have been here to sign off on an exploratory article on page seven, below the fold. When it’s up online the conspiracy nuts descend, but unfortunately they’re just plausible enough to spark a frenzy. National City has long had second city syndrome about its flashier neighbor to the east, and a resentment that they have their own superhero has been festering for years.

“Find that girl,” Cat commands her news division on Monday morning, making a rare trip down to their floor and addressing them like the crowd at a pep rally. “If we’re going to have a hero, then I’m damn well going to be the one that shapes her.”

Put like that, Kara almost finds it appealing. She knows Alex would have booked her a flight to Bolivia by now with some fake documents, but Kara realizes that for the first time since crash landing on this planet, she’s utterly free to do as she pleases. She’s all alone.

She makes a fist that causes her bones to creak, because alone is the last thing she ever wanted to be.

 

* * *

 

An oil tanker on fire is more than Kara can resist, so she cloaks herself in the dark blue that reminds her of her mother’s robes, indigo jeans and a long-sleeved top that almost matches. She leaves her hair down in the hope that it will obscure her face for long enough, and flies down to the docks to help.

She almost succeeds, too. It’s not exactly her fault that tankers are old and poorly maintained, bought through shell corporations in countries that look the other way when inspections ask for the ships to be fit for purpose. She pulls hard enough to drag the entire tin can away from the raging flames, but it’s also far enough to make the metal of the hull warp and crack in horrifying slow motion.

By the time the crowd turns on her, Kara is already shooting back towards the cover of the clouds.

 

* * *

 

The knock at her door is persistent.

Three showers and every lotion she owns later, Kara can still smell burning crude oil on her skin, so she yells out instead of answering.

“I told you: no movie tonight, Winn!”

It isn’t desperately sad that he’s the only person who knows where she lives now, or at least the only one who would pay a social call. When he knocks again, Kara seriously considers flambeing her own front door.

“What?” She snaps, wrenching the door open and feeling the lock give under the twist of her hand. That’s nothing compared to the sight of Cat Grant, dressed down and wielding a pastry box like a shield. “Miss Grant?”

“143 members of staff looking for a mythical figure, and then she shows up on the CatCo copter’s live feed today,” Cat announces, motioning for Kara to let her past. “I’m not even angry that the newsdesk took three minutes to cut to that feed, meaning we saw a blue blur departing the scene and nothing else. Do you know what I’m mad about?”

“The price of baked goods?”

“No.” Cat sets the box on the counter and waves her hand like Kara should help herself. “I’m mad that out of all those trained professionals, I’m the only one who saw it. I have an advantage, of course.”

“You do?” Kara opens the box, simply for somewhere to look that isn’t Cat’s face.

“I see her every single day, after all.” Cat says it so softly that Kara suspects it’s a test of her super hearing. She sighs, and sets the donut back in its overly elaborate box.

“Miss Grant-”

“Don’t you dare lie to me.” Cat steps in close, barely an inch separating their bodies. Kara hunches over the box, like picking a donut is the single most important decision of her life. Then Cat’s hand is on her shoulder, squeezing. Kara thinks the donuts will be a little soggy now, and probably they’ll taste just a little of salt.

 

* * *

 

She’s seen Cat work, day in and day out. Kara has seen what she thought might be miracles, and she’s seen sheer determination and hard work do the rest. She thought she knew what Cat’s focus really looked like, but that was before Cat had a hero of her own to claim.

 _Supergirl_.

She announces it on Twitter before telling Kara, and that’s the first time Kara ever raises her voice to the woman who could ruin both of her lives with a click of her fingers. Kara calls Cat mean and selfish and shallow, and she actually feels good doing it. At least until the silence descends. Cat’s face is a mask of fury, but Kara has two years of seeing past those masks under her belt (not the skinny gold one that Cat has already nixed) and there’s no denying that Cat is deeply, genuinely hurt.

“Is that how you really see me?” Kara asks when the silence stretches on too long. “Would it kill you to see me as a woman? As something approaching your equal?”

“You can leap buildings in a single bound,” Cat points out. “You’re already far past being my equal.” As compliments go, it’s not exactly overflowing, but Kara clutches at it like a precious stone she can take out and marvel at again later.

“So you had ideas about a uniform?”

“Yes, I think we’ll stick with the dark blue,” Cat is back on track, the flare of anger between them doused as quickly as it began. “Now, I know a designer who can work wonders with those hulking shoulders of yours, Keira.”

 

* * *

 

The end result echoes her cousin only in coloring. Martha Kent is an accomplished woman, but even her needlework wouldn’t be enough for the Paris fashion house that Cat recruits on a favor. Kara is fascinated by the trade and bartering, impressed despite all the knowledge she already has of who Cat knows, and exactly what she can summon with a click of her fingers.

Kal comes after Kara’s second day of heroics, claiming to be scouting out the city for a friend who needs a fresh start. Kara tries to talk to him about Alex, about found families and the losses they both carry like boulders on their backs, but Kal is happier these days. Maybe because of Lois, maybe because he’s tired of memories that aren’t really his, but no matter what Kara says to him, his responding platitudes fall flat.

“Here,” he says before taking off from the roof of the CatCo building. He shoves a box at her that he wasn’t carrying a second ago. “In case you thought I didn’t approve.”

She pulls the red blanket against her face, the advanced synthetics as familiar as though Kara had never set foot in a pod. Inhaling deeply, she tells herself she can smell the faint traces of Kryptonian honeysuckle that always hung heavy in the air at Jor-El and Lara’s home.

“Thank you,” she tells her cousin when the ghost of a memory fades all over again. “This means a lot.”

He pats her on the arm, awkward as ever. “We can’t hold on to the past forever, Kara. We’re the only two who got a future, so we should honor that.”

Easy for him to say, Kara grouses as she watches him hurtle off towards the horizon. He doesn’t have to remember it all.

 

* * *

 

They come for her two nights after that, a dart in the leg as she’s descending towards her apartment. When she lands in the building’s deserted parking lot, the ground craters beneath her. Kara feels every inch of the impact, and she’s fairly sure she throws up when they first grab her.

Right before she passes out - the cuffs on her wrists pinch and the nausea is a wave when they click shut - Kara could swear she hears her sister’s name.

It’s what she’s screaming when she wakes up in their holding cell.

 

* * *

 

Three days of minimally invasive tests - of awful food delivered by unsmiling agents, and of fruitless punches thrown at unbreakable glass - pass by in a blur. Kara keeps time only by the digital clock in the hall she glimpses each time one of them brings her tray of rations.

She’s a prisoner, like one of the thousands her mother sent to Fort Rozz. How Alura’s enemies would laugh to see what they would consider justice done. Kara tries to stab the next agent with a fork when he comes, and her reward is the green lights getting brighter and her headache making her feel as though she’s going blind.

They turn it off at night, she realizes on the third day. As long as her body is mimicking the state of sleep closely enough. They clearly don’t know that Kryptonians can control their own heart rate from around they learn to walk. She slows her breathing, lets her heartbeats develop greater spaces between them, and waits for night to settle over this strange military bunker where no sun ever seems to penetrate.

She makes it as far as the door before she hears footsteps on the other side, her hearing returning to superhuman levels with every step she takes towards freedom. When the door slides open - with a shriek of metal that suggests too late it isn’t an official visitor - Kara is stunned into silence at the sight of her aunt, dressed entirely in black.

“Kara?” Astra gasps, clearly overwhelmed. She reaches out to touch Kara’s face, but thinks better of it at the last moment. “They told me this time the humans had captured a woman, but I never dared hope… oh, my darling niece.”

“What are you doing here Aunt Astra?” Kara asks, watching the still deserted corridor behind her.

“Securing your freedom.”

 

* * *

 

It is - like everything else since Kara left Krypton - too good to be true. Astra is not the aunt of childish games and beautiful lullabies. This Astra is a general, a warrior, and her contempt for Earth is outstripped only by her hatred of its inhabitants.

 _Twelve years_ , is all Kara can hear when Astra talks to her. A network of spies catching every hint of Kryptonian activity, and not once did they stumble across Kara and her alien accidents. Not in Midvale, not at Northwestern, but only now in National City when the humans had turned her into a lab rat.

“I won’t,” Kara answers when her help is sought in controlling the humans. She knows what Non and Astra mean is really destroying the humans, and how can she do that to any population that gave her Alex, that still holds Eliza? How can Kara ever do without a people whose best representative is Cat Grant? She won’t do it, and the thought of protecting Cat gives Kara the resolve to weather the disappointment on Astra’s face, so almost identical to Alura’s.

“Then you’ll be my enemy,” Astra warns.

“It won’t be the first time you’ve betrayed your family for a cause,” Kara reminds her. She flies off, fully recovered, and doesn’t dare to look back. No doubt Astra will be after Kara again soon, if the DEO doesn’t get her first.

Where else can she go in her panic? In her need for shelter and privacy? Cat likes to regale Kara with stories of her journalistic exploits, and Kara likes to let her. This won’t be the first time Cat has harbored a fugitive, though her regulars tended to be actors hiding from their divorce woes being splashed across Cat’s papers.

Kara lands on the roof of Cat’s penthouse, and the skylight is opened for her before she can knock to be let in.

 

* * *

 

Kara sleeps and works and eats at Cat’s house.

Cat maintains a visible presence at CatCo, but for the first time in over a decade her hours are short and almost family-friendly. It coincides nicely with Carter back in her custody, his enthusiasm for Kara and an outlet where she doesn’t have to be Supergirl giving all of them some much-needed relief.

“I can’t hide forever,” Kara announces one evening after Carter has been tucked up in bed by his mother. She picks at the remnants of her dessert, something decadent that Cat would never usually allow in the house. Kara didn’t even have to ask, and every day there’s a fresh pile of groceries to top up the haul that suggests Cat will do well if the apocalypse is really coming.

“This isn’t hiding,” Cat counters, pouring herself a generous glass of Scotch. “You’re regrouping.”

“Maybe if I go back to how things were, they’ll leave me alone,” is Kara’s best suggestion after days of laying low. “They have to see I’m not a threat, right?”

“You might not think you are,” Cat reminds her. “But they always will.”

“I’m coming back to work tomorrow.” Kara’s mind is made up. “And the other stuff will have to stop. I’m sorry if that hurts the circulation for the Trib but-”

Cat cuts her off with an irritated flicker of her fingers. “It’s your life, Kara.”

 

* * *

 

And so Kara learns once again to tune out the screams. She ignores the breaking news bulletins and the glowing yellow chyrons on every screen. It’s almost getting easier to keep her head down and pretend to be another helpless human, the exceptional days already beginning to feel like they happened to someone else.

She takes Alex’s boxes and moves them one by one to a storage locker. Kara doesn’t use even a second of super speed, she walks them over two-by-two. If her strength could be turned down altogether she would do that too. The task feels the whole time as though it should hurt more.

It’s Carter in danger that draws her out again, a rescue that turns out to be nothing more than a false alarm caused by the melodramatic screams of other children, but Kara feels the silent shift of focus and knows she’s under observation again.

When she gets back to CatCo, panicked and weary, she’s stunned to see a crowd has formed outside Cat’s office.

“Where is Miss Grant?” She demands, marching up to her own desk and having to push her way through.

“They took her,” Derek answers, infuriatingly vague as ever. “The men in black took her.”

Kara’s stomach does an unfortunate, sad little flip at the news. They’re not coming for her directly this time.

 

* * *

 

It’s Maxwell Lord who stops her, in the rubble of the third secret government building she unearths.

“Supergirl,” he tuts, as though he’s caught her smoking at recess. “This is no way to hunt down a valuable asset. You should have reached out to me.”

“Reach out?” Kara spits. “I don’t even know you. And what I know of you? I don’t exactly like. Neither does my boss.”

“Cat liked me well enough once upon a time,” Max reminds her with a leer. “You shouldn’t listen to all the bitter stuff. You want my help or not?”

“Do you know where she is?”

“Why do you care so much?” Max demands. “She made CatCo so watertight it could run for years without her. And if I didn’t know you were looking for her, you’d be the first alien I’d blame for hurting her. So what gives?”

“I owe her,” Kara settles on. “I owe her a great debt.”

“You should come work for me,” Max tries. “If I can understand you, I can show these government knuckleheads that your threat can be neutralized.”

“You’ll never understand me,” Kara tells him, completely confident in her assertion. “Now tell me what you know about Cat, or you’ll really have something to fear from aliens.”

“Cat, is it?” Max teases, another sleazy chuckle falling from his mouth. “I think Supergirl has a little crush.”

“I’ll crush you if-”

“Enough!” Max snaps, tired of the games. “I give you this and you’ll owe me. Understood? And unlike Cat, I will definitely collect.”

“Fine.” Kara makes her deal with the devil. She tries not to question why it’s only for Cat that she’d do it so readily. As Max hands over the address, Kara thanks Rao with a silent prayer. She adds another for Alex’s forgiveness, that she didn’t show this same dedication to saving her before it was too late.

 

* * *

 

The fight costs her next to nothing, and the Kryptonite damage wears off fast enough. Kara’s barely limping by the time she carries Cat out into the desert, cool air whipping around them from every angle. Another moment or two and flight will be back, Kara can tell now what her limits are. She just needs to get a little further.

It’s only when they’re safely airborne that she dares to look directly at Cat. Limp in Kara’s arms, she’s bruised in too many places for such limited amounts of exposed skin. Her lip has dried blood at one corner, and the fact that even hurtling through the sky hasn’t woken her has Kara in full crisis mode by the time they land.

Cat comes to - finally - at the smell of coffee after Kara lays her gently on the low couch in the living room.

“Well,” Cat groans, sitting up gingerly and losing all color from her face at the exertion. She seems to regret the move instantly, and Kara gently moves her back to lying out flat. “Say what you like about the Bush years, but at least you knew what to expect with waterboarding.”

“Did they-”

“I’m fine,” Cat interrupts, blinking up at an upside down Kara as she leans over her. “You must be beating yourself up, and that stops right now.”

“They hurt you,” Kara growls. “They have to pay.”

Cat reaches up to touch Kara’s cheek, sighing as Kara leans into the tender contact.

“It was nothing I can’t handle.”

“I can’t handle it,” Kara admits. “I’ve done some things these past few days that I…”

“Ssh,” Cat soothes. “And move over there so I don’t have to look at you the wrong way round.”

“Can I help you to bed?” Kara asks. “I’ll be careful, I swear.”

“That would be nice,” Cat mutters in agreement. “You’re always careful with me. I missed that.”

They don’t speak while Kara takes her to the bedroom, and there’s barely a murmur as she strips Cat’s torn clothing from her, incinerating it over a plant pot on the balcony with Cat’s silent approval. As though they’ve done it a hundred times, Kara picks out a worn and comfortable t-shirt for Cat to sleep in, wiping her hands and face and feet with a damp facecloth to help her feel at least a little cleansed before turning in.

“Goodnight,” Kara whispers, clicking off the last lamp.

“Stay,” Cat pleads. “Please, just come here.”

“Of course.” Kara is just relieved that there’s finally something concrete she can do. She changes with a burst of her powers, and in soft cotton protection of her own, she crawls into Cat’s bed for the first time, gingerly pulling her close.

 

* * *

 

Cat’s scream wakes them both scant hours later, and Kara falls from the bed in alarm.

“So much for grace,” Cat teases, trying to catch her breath and a scrap of composure. “Shouldn’t your natural floating kick in when that happens?”

“I don’t control it,” Kara bitches, getting back on the bed. She isn’t entirely surprised when Cat grabs a fistful of the Wellesley shirt Kara borrowed and pulls her into a fleeting but turbulent kiss.

“I shouldn’t,” Cat confesses. “You’re still grieving, you’re trying to decide how to do this hero thing, but I’m sorry, Kara. I couldn’t wait another minute.”

“I’m glad you didn’t,” Kara confesses, and she kisses Cat this time, with two years of silent devotion wrapped up in it. “This is the first thing to go right in a really long time,” she adds, when they’re breathless and flushed long minutes later.

“You’ll need a plan,” Cat nudges. “If you go into hiding, I’ll find a way to come with you.”

“I was thinking,” Kara starts to explain. “I think I need to go the opposite way. As public as possible.”

“Safety in the public eye?” Cat surmises. “I like it. All the while making yourself so valuable that the people of National City would riot to have you taken from them.”

“Right.” Kara takes Cat’s hands in her own, looking at how their fingers instinctively fit together. “I’m not wild about all that attention, but if it means I stick around long enough to see where this goes…”

“Your sister would be proud,” Cat ventures, unsure of the sentiment.

“No, she’d be horrified,” Kara admits. “But she’d like that I’m standing up for myself, I think.”

“I know I do,” Cat tells her. “Shall we try for a little more sleep?”

“Please,” Kara groans, already sinking into the pillows again. Cat’s fragile body against her own is an anchor in all that’s roiling around them. Not alone, not now. Kara smiles into Cat’s hair at the prospect of being a full-time hero, of finally being everything her mother expected Kara to be for Kal-El, just on a far grander scale. Grand scales are where Cat lives, and Kara thinks that might just make it the kind of place she wants to be.

They fall asleep moments later, and Kara is almost sure she hears a knock at the door.


End file.
